The outwardly sweet and cartoon-like, massively multiplayer, online role-playing game MapleStory is an unlikely enough setting for a crime, let alone one committed by a 43-year-old lady piano teacher. Having met and "married" the online avatar of a fellow player, the woman from Kyushu province in southern Japan had lived a happy in-game life as a virtual wife with her virtual husband. When one day she logged on to discover he had "divorced" her character without warning or explanation, she used her knowledge of him to hack his account and "kill" the avatar he'd spent years building up. In a bizarre twist, she was then arrested and taken more than 600 miles to Sapporo, the home of her make-believe ex-spouse to face charges, presumably of pretend murder, for which she could be fined more than £3,000 and face an entirely non-simulated, five-year prison sentence.